WORD OF MOUTH

HOW DID IT HAPPEN that an 18-year-old kid from Vallejo, California, found himself at Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison, working inside the mouths of some of the world’s most notorious war criminals? In 1946, just a few months out of high school, Ed Case enlisted in the U.S. Army to take advantage of the G.I. Bill and—because he had worked part-time in a dental lab while in school—landed a job as a dental assistant. Upon reaching Sugamo in January 1947, Case was assigned to the prison wing containing the Class A war criminals—once exalted leaders, now humbled prison inmates facing charges of war crimes, conspiracy to wage war, and crimes against humanity at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

There, Case would become intimately involved in the dental needs of some of the most infamous men in the world, while at the same time gathering their autographs. He collected the signatures of 25 prisoners on slips of paper he